The Shins

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A classic guitar pop group almost nine years in the making, Albuquerque, New Mexico's the Shins began in 1997 as the side project of singer/songwriter and guitarist James Mercer's primary band, Flake.

Mercer formed Flake in 1992 with drummer Jesse Sandoval, keyboardist Marty Crandall, and bassist Neal Langford; they eventually changed their name to Flake Music, releasing several singles, a well-received album, When You Land Here, It's Time to Return, and touring with friends like Modest Mouse and Califone.

Soon after the release of When You Land Here, Mercer and Sandoval formed the Shins as a change of pace, playing as a duo with Cibo Matto and the American Analog Set. With Mercer as the Shins' primary songwriter, the group developed a more focused, crafted sound than Flake Music's charming, if somewhat rambling, collaborative style. Crandall, as well as Scared of Chaka's Dave Hernandez and Ron Skrasek, filled out the Shins' lineup; however, Hernandez and Skrasek left after a short while, due to the success of their main project. By 1999, Flake Music essentially disbanded and Langford also joined the Shins.

With a couple of 7"s on Omnibus -- 1998's "Nature Bears a Vacuum" and 2000's "When I Goose-Step" -- under their belts, the Shins embarked on a tour with Modest Mouse. Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman caught the San Francisco date of the tour and asked the Shins to contribute a single to the label's Single of the Month Club, which eventually became an offer to release their 2001 single "New Slang" and their debut album, Oh, Inverted World. The group spent the rest of the year touring with acts such as Preston School of Industry and Red House Painters. The release of the singles "Know Yr Onion!" and "The Past and the Pending" kept the Shins' success going into 2002, cementing Oh, Inverted World as one of the definitive indie rock albums of the early 2000s and the band as one of the style's definitive artists.

By the time the band recorded their second album, Chutes Too Narrow, Langford was replaced on bass by Dave Hernandez (ex-Scared of Chaka). The album appeared in fall 2003 and was their first to reach the Billboard charts. The Shins' profile increased dramatically when actor Zach Braff included several of their songs in his 2004 movie Garden State. Its follow-up, Wincing the Night Away, appeared in January 2007 and sold over 100,000 copies in its first week. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, making it Sub Pop's highest-charting album to date (their previous peak was with the Afghan Whigs' 1996 album Black Love, which reached number 79.) It was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Album.

In 2008, the band announced that their contract with Sub Pop was up, and that their next album would be released through Mercer's own Aural Apothecary label. Around that time, Mercer began working with producer/multi-instrumentalist Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton), as Broken Bells. The project kept him busy for a couple of years, and when the Shins returned with the Greg Kurstin-produced Port of Morrow, Mercer's backing band featured fellow songwriters Jessica Dobson and Richard Swift, Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, and Crystal Skulls' Yuuki Matthews. It arrived in March 2012 and reached number three on the Billboard charts. The Shins contributed the song "So Now What" to the soundtrack of Braff's 2014 film Wish I Was Here and a cover of the Beatles' "The Word" to the Netflix series Beat Bugs in 2016. Later that year, they returned with "Dead Alive," the first single from their fifth album Heartworms, which was released in March 2017 on Mercer's Aural Apothecary imprint. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi